


my head is getting heavy (i just want to be in your arms)

by kashxy



Series: baby, don’t cry [1]
Category: Iron Man - Fandom, Spider-Man: Homecoming
Genre: Hallucinations, Illusions, PTSD, Schizophrenia, Therapeutic Medication, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Trauma, medication use, schizophrenic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-13 18:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashxy/pseuds/kashxy
Summary: sometimes i get so tired that i can’t feel my edges anymore.it’s like melting.(but not in a good way.)





	my head is getting heavy (i just want to be in your arms)

peter knows harley’s tired. 

his eyes are bruised purple, a darkening shadowed pigment of exhaustion and abuse, highlighted and prominent like a gravestone in a field of tulips. he crawls through peter’s window at three in the morning with lips that aren’t a perfect rosy colour and hair that isn’t very soft anymore - he’s tired, but he’s trying. 

he follows peter everywhere now. he mustn’t have anywhere else to go, for he trundles next to him like a leashed puppy, whimpering and lost when peter turns a side eye to him every once in a while. they don’t speak, but the headache he resides in peter’s head refuses to leave until he faces him again. he barely breathes when peter stops in the middle of the road and tries to remind himself that it’s not time. 

and it’s stupid, because harley cares about him, more than anyone ever has. harley knows _everything_ about him, everything rooted so deep inside his mind that it’s never surfaced out of his lips. 

he’s good, he’s good, he’s kind and he’s smart and he’s everything peter needs in this dying world. he’s the most good peter’s felt in a long, long time, and he’s no idea why everyone is so intent on keeping his eyes turned from the only good he has left in his life. 

there’s nothing in this world that compares to harley. nothing. 

“peter? he’s here.” 

peter blinks at the wall, the midday sun riding the horizon to his left, the broken mirror he’d smashed two weeks ago to his right. he’s not really _there_ yet, so he tries to curl his fingers around the bedsheets and poke himself back to reality. 

oh, yes, because harley had left a week ago and hadn’t come back and his absence was residing the worst headache peter had ever felt. he misses him, more than anything in this world and beyond it. 

harley’s _still_ not here. he’s no way to contact him, so he’s not really sure where he is or what he’s doing or who he’s with, but there’s this presence in his head that settles like dust on a countertop and traces its way through his veins. he takes a deep breath and tears his eyes to the sun, trying not to breathe more than once in ten seconds. 

sometimes he wonders if the sun’s just there to blind him, if everyone is seeing the same thing he is or if it’s just another inconvenience for him to add to the list of things that makes up his illnesses. sometimes he’s convinced the stars he sees at night aren’t the same holes everyone else sees, that there’s some illusion in front of him twisting his reality and forcing false fantasies before his eyes. 

and he supposes that’s kind of like how he views harley, because the boy is the most perfect person he’s ever met in whole life. he’s an actual angel walking the ground of earth, and yet nobody seems to reciprocate his undying love for a boy who might not be as pure and untainted as he thinks. 

“peter! come on!” 

he looks back to the door, lips parted slightly. there’s a little shuffling below the floor, and then some continuous, repetitive beats on the stairs outside his bedroom. he blinks slightly and tries to dry his watery eyes for tony to see. 

the door swings open with a long creak, something that makes his limbs wince and his head tilt. he looks to where tony’s staring at him, all soft eyes and baby skinned. 

“pete, you okay?” 

he steps over the phone that lays dormant on the floor, notes he’d written to harley gone and lost forever in an firing outburst of emotions. he’d broken it maybe three days ago, and it hadn’t moved since. 

“come on. doctor stanley’s waiting.” 

tony’s hand is soft on his thigh when he sits gently next to him, rubbing in slow circles like he’s afraid to break his skin with the undying pressure. when peter’s brain manages to catch up and turn his eyes away from the door to his father figure, the latter is staring at him with the same blank expression he always wears, the sympathetic, blissfully drugged look that peter hates. 

maybe tony was on drugs. maybe he was sticking to the sleeping pills his doctor gave him in the hopes he’d learn how to sleep without overdosing. maybe he was so tired of peter’s presence that he couldn’t fake expression anymore. 

and peter’s pretty sure he knows which one it is, is pretty sure that he knows that he’s murdering tony’s lifespan with every day that stretches out in front of them. they used to be a team, see, and they used to work together, battling each day as it came, each appointment, each therapist, each medication. 

it’s not like peter misses it, anyway, because he’d never have as much time for harley as he does now if they’d stuck with their routinely schedule of trying to piece together broken jigsaw pieces. 

maybe the nostalgia of feeling safe under the pressure of tony’s thumb is just too big of a hole to fill - even for harley. 

“are you ready?” tony says as peter moves his thigh away slightly. his sweatpants hang off him, loose and warm as the cold autumn air sleeps through the open window. he’s not sure when he’d opened it, but he had. 

“yeah,” he says, and it’s tired and worn out and he knows tony doesn’t miss it because he helps him up with a strong hand and tears in his eyes. “ready.” 

the older man nods, leading him towards the top of the stairs. peter doesn’t like standing here, because a month ago he’d stormed to the top step and cried and tried to throw himself down the stairs when they’d told him harley wasn’t coming back. he didn’t stop crying until he’d passed out and woke up laying sideways with vomit around his lips. 

he manages the stairs, battles through the trauma and the nightmarish visions they hold like he always does, and before he knows it he’s staring at the door like he can’t move his head away. 

doctor stanley was a guy. peter could never say he was a good guy because harley had claimed that word like a vixen, but he appreciates his doctors’ unwavering support nonetheless. 

_(and sure he hates him for more than one reason, but tony liked him, and he never could pull happiness away from the only other person besides harley who actually cared for him.) _

his doctor’s a tall man, skinny and sharp with a voice that softens like a knife to butter. he’s got this mousy look about him, something him and harley had giggled about underneath the covers after terrifying encounters. 

harley wasn’t mean, per say, but he hated anyone around peter who wasn’t him, despised anyone touching him with hands that didn’t belong to his own body. he’s possessive, yeah, but peter’s just fine with that. they depend on each other to breathe properly, but it’s not a problem until he leaves. 

and right now, peter can’t breathe properly. his legs walk over to the dining table like he’s a robot, monotone and rehearsed so his brain can catch a break and focus on allowing his lungs to expand and deflate, over and over and over again. 

“peter. how are you doing?” 

peter doesn’t answer at first, his brain too foggy to conclude an answer at any point. tony’s near them, he knows, because there’s no way peter could cope being left alone without anyone he knows properly, and harley’s not here right now, so he doesn’t really have any more options. 

“i’m coping.” he mumbles, feeling uncomfortable even within the four walls of a kitchen he knows so well. he doesn’t mention the word ‘_well_’, afraid his bare faced lies will seep through onto the tabletop. 

and, well, peter’s not stupid. he can read a room like a book.

_(he can also make that room read whatever he wants it too, if they try hard enough.)_

doctor stanley knows. peter watches him scribble something in that notebook of his, the one that’s bursting with his most private secrets. peter has a folder all to himself, and it’s almost full. 

“and how are you doing on the medication?” 

peter freezes, his mind short wiring blank. there’s no fucking way he can lie now, not when tony’s tapping on the table in the way he does when he wants to say something, not when doctor stanley’s already moving to open the notebook. 

they’d changed his medication up a week ago, swapped some of them around, added some new ones in. he still can’t keep up with everything he has to take; dilantin, clozapine, olanzapine, mirtazapine, others that he doesn’t really have the brain capacity to remember. tony feeds them to him like breakfast cereal, and he swallows them without thinking, like some kind of blissed out zombie. 

“peter? how are you doing on the clozapine?” 

peter blinks again, slowly, like his eyelashes are glued together. tony’s speaking, but he can’t really hear what he’s saying. 

harley should be here by now. 

he should be sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for peter to finish his appointment, feet kicking in a repetitive manner into the air, forever impatient. he should be making stupid faces behind doctor stanley’s back, tongue lolling out as he pretends to strangle himself. 

but he’s not. 

“how are you doing on the clozapine, peter?” he asks again, his pen lying dormant in his hand. 

peter bites his teeth together and winces, the sensation overriding his brain as he jolts his head and tries to snap into focus. 

“i’m sorry, i-”

“take your time, pete.” tony says soothingly, his fingers lightly moving against the table top. he’s speaking, but when peter turns to look at him properly, his eyes are half closed as he strains to talk past his own nightmares, and to be truthful to peter’s doctor. 

he manages to space in for half the conversation, getting bits and pieces out as he goes. stuff about how he’s worried the clozapine isn’t working, about how peter can’t go back to school because of what happened last autumn, about how he wants him to go inpatient again because he _just can’t cope_. 

and, wow, that gets peter’s attention, and it seems to get doctor stanley’s too, because he nods gently and takes another look at peter. 

he tries to stop it, tries to stop the shaking and the twitching and the rapid blinking, but he can’t help it because he’s so fucking afraid and- 

“i think that might be a good idea.” 

peter’s brain short wires, and he goes limp again, dissociating on the spot because there’s no fucking way he’s going inpatient again, not when he’s this close to seeing harley, not when so much has happened to get him past this point. 

tony’s nodding, teary eyed and shaky as he tries to talk to peter, tries to get any reaction out of his distanced soul. 

but peter’s not looking at him. 

he’s looking at the curly haired, green eyed boy sitting on top of the countertop, legs swinging with an expression that’s as peaceful as it always was. 

he’s so beautiful. so beautiful that it’s almost painful for peter to blink himself back to reality and zone back into harley’s presence. he can feel two pairs of eyes on him, feel a hand on his arm, but he doesn’t move, too intoxicated with the feeling of being near to harley after so long. 

and he wants to run to him, wants to fall into his arms and sob until the sun falls and rises again, wants to breathe in his presence and keep it in his lungs for as long as he possibly can without dying, because if he dies, he’ll never get to see harley’s gorgeous face again. 

“peter? is harley here?” 

doctor stanley sounds far away, muffled like he’s being suffocated with a pillow case. tony shakes his head and wipes his eyes a couple times when peter doesn’t move, his eyes still blinking in the same place harley sits. 

“peter,” he greets, all honey mouthed and warm smiled. “come here.” 

he looks inviting, his presence delectable as peter tries to fight the squirming, tries to get his brain to focus again because there are real important issues here, like how if he doesn’t snap himself out of it soon he’s going to go inpatient again, like how if he gives in and goes to harley’s arms, they’ll strap him up in a stretcher again and he’ll be unable to move and they’ll-

“i haven’t been taking them.” 

his voice surprises everyone, but none less than himself. doctor stanley nods, professional as he is, and writes down a few notes. 

“and why haven’t you been taking your tablets, peter?” 

and what does he say to that? 

that he needs harley? that without him he feels like he’s never going to be whole? that when he’d tried taking the clozapine instead of hiding it under his tongue, he’d smashed a mirror just to stop the angry outbursts harley put on him? 

and as he sits there and watches harley’s face morph like it’s possessed and then reposition back to its normal structure, he realises why he’d been so inclined to carry out the appointments in the first place, why he’d told everyone the truth when harley was controlling him like a broken puppet on strings.

“i think i need some help.” he manages to choke out before collapsing into tony’s arms in a flurry of sobs, wracking and violent as he clutches to his shirt. tony soothes him, his eyes trailing over harley unknowingly, and peter sobs harder. 

“i need him gone.” 

“we know, peter. we’re gonna do everything we can to get him to leave you alone.” 

peter doesn’t hate doctor stanley, because he’s kind and he’s reasonable and he’s been there for peter through thick and thin. 

and he doesn’t hate tony either, because that man hadn’t moved from his side, not when he’d stood in the middle of the street at noon and screamed to the sun, not when he’d slapped himself in the face over and over and over again on a public bus and he’d had to hold his wrists together. 

harley had been there through everything, but he’d screamed, and he’d taunted, and he’d critiqued every little thing peter had done since he first came into his life. he’d lit the first match in a long row of bombs, and it’d been a war zone since then. 

harley’s still on the countertop, face relaxed, even slightly confused, when peter fails to make any kind of gesture towards him. his legs stop swinging, and he curls them into himself, watching only over the top of his knees. 

so peter sits there and he cries, long sobs that stretch further than his sadness could ever reach, shaking like a leaf in a tornado, because harley isn’t good.

_(and he never had been.) _


End file.
